Palaeoecological and genetic analyses of Late Pleistocene bears in Asiatic Russiaстатья
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Аннотация:Brown bears are one of the few large carnivore species that survived the final Pleistocene wave of extinctions, perhapsin part owing to their wide ecological plasticity, variety of forms and polyphagia. Although the brown bear hasbecome a well-studied system, many questions remain regarding the ecological, trophic and genetic diversitythroughout their distribution. For example, knowledge about Asiatic Russian brown bears from the Late Pleistocenearctic tundra steppe, an ecosystem with no analogue in modern times, is sparse. Here we compared diets,morphometry and genetic affinities of Late Pleistocene bears based on broadly sampled subfossil remains fromAsiatic Russia. Collecting sites included the Ural Mountains, the lower reaches of the Irtysh River, the upper reachesof the Ob River, the Altai Mountains of western Siberia, the Indigirka–Kolyma Lowlands and northwesternChukotka. An extremely large bear specimen from the middle Indigirka (41 09014C a BP) that lived in landscapes oftreeless shrubs and wet meadows had a diet composed principally of large herbivorous mammals. A bear fromwestern Chukotka (25 88014C a BP), much smaller in size, had a diet close to that of modern brown bears. These twoLate Pleistocene NE Russian brown bears may comprise a previously undiscovered, but extinct, genetic lineage. Atthe end of the Pleistocene (MIS 3 and MIS 2), the brown bears from the Ob River Valley and Urals lived in periglacialforest-steppes and those from the southern Urals in conditions of periglacial steppe. Brown bears from the Ob Rivervalley and Urals, aswell as ancient Altai bears, werecharacterized by avaried diet, from polyphagiatovegetarianism.In living brown bears, the proportions of different dietary foods are primarily related to food availability, whichdepends on the geographical zone and climatic conditions. We conclude that the same was true for Late Pleistocenebrown bears of NE Siberia.